From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Irans main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding Americas first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks  begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games  even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Irans Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worms escape, Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether Americas most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Irans nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

Should we shut this thing down? Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the presidents national security team who were in the room.

[SNIP]

This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

Since Obama has no accomplishments to run on, I expect him to continue to endanger national security by revealing progress in classified programs that he inherited but did not initiate.This thug will do and say anything to get re-elected.

One sort of paradoxical thing thing about secret information is that the bad guys can claim anything they want to, secure in the knowledge that the good guys won’t reveal the truth, because the good guys actually care about national security more than personal ambition, even when that means letting a lie go unchallenged.

This is Tom Clancey novel Krap. Is Ol’Tom writing for the NYDit’s now? What sane, thinking person would suppose that screwing with the Persians’ computers would keep them from building a bomb? We did it without any kind of computer geek help and so can they. Their older engineer types were educated here and can figger it out.

Now I’m all for every possible effort to clusterflock the Persians-—they got it coming——but my personal preference is to use them to test our weapons in places where it would really count. The idea that slowing their program is beneficial is somehow desirable is pure bullstuff. The idea is to KILL their program and make them remember it.

What sane, thinking person would suppose that screwing with the Persians computers would keep them from building a bomb?

A sane, thinking person who has read about the effects of the Stuxnet worm on the centrifuge control firmware that Iran was running. There are several reports that, by tweaking the operating speeds of the centrifuges just a bit, the worm was able to disable almost half of them.

Fewer centrifuges working = less enriched uranium produced = longer to create enough to build a bomb.

The dangerous thing about pussies is when you back them far enough into a corner, they overreact.

You take some depressed, bullied kid who’s been pushed too far and he comes to school looking to kill every kid with a ‘white hat’ on. This actually happened at Columbine.

Obama, well and truly, is a pussy, but the problem is he’s never actually had to stand up for himself. There’s always been someone or something running interference.

What if he overreacts to a provocation made by guys like Putin, or Dinner Jacket?

It’s just a thought. You see it from pussies who are resolute that they will never be known as a pussy ever again. It’s the only thing I can ascribe the Osama kill nonsense, and the Obama the dronemaster meme too.

Dangerous stuff.

17
posted on 06/01/2012 2:10:14 PM PDT
by RinaseaofDs
(Does beheading qualify as 'breaking my back', in the Jeffersonian sense of the expression?)

“This leak is perhaps the worst in American history because it discloses, admittedly from anonymous sources inside the Obama administration, the specifics of our cyberwarfare against Irans nuclear facilities. By disclosing this classified information in excruciating detail, Obama and his traitorous comrades not only compromise our cyberwarfare capabilities, but also broadcast to Iran and the rest of the hostile world that the United States was the first use these weapons  potentially triggering retaliation against American and Israeli interests. Israel is revealed to have participated in the claimed cyber-attacks, and indeed the Obama administration conveniently blames the Jewish state for having inadvertently released the cyber-virus Stuxnet into the public domain for other nations and terrorist groups to use against us  constituting yet another sleazy attack by Obama on our only ally in the Middle East.”

NYT: “It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another countrys infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.”

This also appears to be an act of war. Administrations usually go to great lengths to conceal covert operations. Some remain classified after decades unless some American megalomaniac decides his political status is more vital than national security.

24
posted on 06/02/2012 9:06:55 AM PDT
by Brad from Tennessee
(A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)

If they had used this capability strictly to collect intelligence information, and refrained from blabbing about it, who knows what they might ultimately have discovered (names, locations, program status). But since the man-child never had any intention of using overt force, it was more politically expedient to score a temporary “victory” with STUXNET, rather than collecting targeting data for later on.

Exactly. This story should have appeared in the New York Times in about 50 years from now, like the stories of Blechley Park and the German Enigma code did after World War II.

In World War II, there were actually attacks that could have been stopped and weren’t because the Allied Commanders thought it would be too obvious to the Germans that the Enigma Code had been broken. When adults were in charge, lives were sacrificed because they knew that more lives would be saved in the long run if the secret was kept. Today, the work of many dedicated computer scientists has been wasted, because the Obama administration thought this might give them a temporary bump in the polls.

Since Obama has no accomplishments to run on, I expect him to continue to endanger national security by revealing progress in classified programs that he inherited but did not initiate.This thug will do and say anything to get re-elected.

FNC had a segment this morning about the Obama reelection team "leaking" security issues that should be kept secret for at least another 30 years or so just for the campaign.

I pray this backfires on them

30
posted on 06/04/2012 6:58:45 AM PDT
by CAluvdubya
(I just try to stay out of the fray...)

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